A change in status for Aboriginal women? Aboriginal women in the Australian workforce

European Ideology and Aboriginal Women.In studying the history of relations between Aboriginal people and European Australians, it is apparent that the mid-1960s marked something of a watershed in the official interest in Australia's 'race relations'.1 Following the Social Sciences Research Council's 'Aborigines' Project', the publication of Rowley's major trilogy in 1970-712 did much to highlight the destruction of traditional Aboriginal society and the plight of Aborigines in contemporary Australia.Certain analyses of 'race relations' at that time led to studies of biological differences, based on a concept of race, and subsequent research attempted to establish differences in intelligence quotients.3More recently, the academic emphasis has shifted to a concept of 'ethnicity' which focuses on cultural rather than biological differences between groups.This approach tends to explain the subordination of minority groups in terms of culture in one of two ways, neither of which are mutually opposed.The first is the 'culture of poverty' thesis,4 positing a cycle of deprivation that breeds distinctive cultural traits, such as immediate gratification of needs and lack of motivation, which are inexorably at odds with the spirit of the Western work ethic.It has been used to explain the position of the poor in Carol Bradley spent a year in Darwin carrying out research into Aborigines in the workforce; this ful filled part o f the requirements for a BSc(Hons) at the University o f Bath.She is at present tutoring in the Department o f Sociology at Flinders University, South Australia, and working towards a PhD. 1 Official documentation throughout the period of European settlement reports on separate incidents involving Aborigines and Europeans.But little analysis was made and little action was taken other than punitive measures against the offenders -usually found to be the Aborigines.Many of these accounts, together with parliamentary reports, are published in one volume by Stone (1974).Among anthro pologists, A.P. Elkin was notable for being among the first to document the effects of the invasion of European settlers on Aboriginal society.7 Charles Rowley was appointed the Director of the SSRC's Aborigines Project, 1964-1967.The result ing series Aborigines in Australian society contained the trilogy which examined the position of Abo rigines throughout what he called 'settled' and 'colonial' Australia.^ See for example the work of psychologists A.